Solution focused brief therapy
by Amanda Mozley, Speech and Language Therapist, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust

Solution focused brief therapy won't cure your stammer. What it will do is enable you to look at the successes you have had and enable you to recognize and develop your strengths as a person. The essence of brief therapy is:

To treat the client as an expert in all aspects of their lives.
To work with the person rather than the problem.
To look for strengths rather than weaknesses.
To explore the client's goals for the future.
To explore what the client is already doing to achieve these goals.

Solution Focused Brief Therapy was developed in 1986 by a group of therapists led by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg. They came to the following conclusions:

Whatever the problem there were always exceptions when the problem was less apparent or even absent altogether.

The clients' hopes for the future were identified as being essential to the therapy progress and as a result of this therapy became briefer.

These two main ideas led to therapists concentrating on the clients' strengths and using the clients' own personal resources to charting their way forward in life and achieving their personal ambitions. Thousands of people were treated successfully, even those that were classed as untreatable.

At Chelsea and Westminster Hospital we have used SFBT with considerable success with people who stammer. No matter how severe the dysfluency, solution focused brief therapy has enabled clients to see themselves in a completely new light - as people who have individual inner strengths that can and do help them to lead normal lives. They then are able to set goals and plan what they want for their futures - what is known as their preferred future. Clients realise that they are very skilled at finding their own solutions and can then go on to work out their own strategies to be in control.

Solution focused brief therapy - index